Triplanetary
as you can and still get good pictures of everything that happens. I
will see that orders are issued to the _Chicago_ to that effect."
"But listen ..."
"Those are orders!" snapped Samms. "It is of the utmost importance that
we know every detail of what is going to happen. The answer is pictures.
The only possibility of obtaining pictures is that machine you have just
developed. If the fleet wins, nothing will be lost. If the fleet
loses--and I am not half as confident of success as the Admiral is--the
_Chicago_ doesn't carry enough power to decide the issue, and we will
have the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we've
probably lost Conway Costigan to-day, and we don't want to lose _you_,
too."
Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but the
grizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth Jovian War that he was, was not
convinced.
"We'll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms!" he declared.
"You just think you will, Captain. I have suggested, as forcibly as
possible, that the general attack be withheld until after a thorough
investigation is made, but the Admiralty will not listen. They see the
advisability of withdrawing a camera ship, but that is as far as they
will go."
"And that's plenty far enough!" growled the _Chicago's_ commander, as
the beam snapped off. "Mr. Cleveland, I don't like the idea of running
away under fire, and I won't do it without direct orders from the
Admiral."
"Of course you won't--that's why you are going...."
He was interrupted by a voice from the Headquarters speaker. The captain
stepped up to the plate and, upon being recognized, he received the
exact orders which had been requested by the Chief of the Secret
Service--now not as secret as it had been heretofore.
Thus it was that the _Chicago_ reversed her acceleration, cut off her
red screen, and fell rapidly behind, while the vessels following her in
their loose cone formation shot away toward another crimson-flaring
leader. Farther and farther back she dropped, back to the limiting range
of the ultra-cameras upon which Cleveland and his highly trained
assistants were furiously and unremittingly at work. And during all this
time the forces of the seven sectors had been concentrating. The pilot
vessels, with their flaming red screens, each followed by a cone of
space-ships, drew closer and closer together, approaching the
_Fearless_--the British super-dreadnaught which was to be the flagship
of the Fleet--the mightiest and heaviest space-ship which had yet lifted
her stupendous mass into the ether.
Now, systematically and precisely, the great Cone of Battle was coming
into being; a formation developed during the Jovian Wars while the
forces of the Three Planets were fighting in space for their very
civilizations' existence, and one never used since the last space-fleets
of Jupiter's murderous hordes had been wiped out.
The mouth of that enormous hollow cone was a ring of scout patrols, the
smallest and most agile vessels of the fleet. Behind them came a
somewhat smaller ring of light cruisers, then rings of heavy cruisers
and of light battleships, and finally of heavy battleships. At the apex
of the cone, protected by all the other vessels of the formation and in
best position to direct the battle, was the flagship. In this formation
every vessel was free to use her every weapon, with a minimum of danger
to her sister ships; and yet, when the gigantic main projectors were
operated along the axis of the formation, from the entire vast circle of
the cone's mouth there flamed a cylindrical field of force of such
intolerable intensity that in it no conceivable substance could endure
for a moment!
The artificial planet of metal was now close enough so that it was
visible to the ultra-vision of the Secret Service men, so plainly
visible that the warships of the pirates were seen issuing from the
enormous air-locks. As each vessel shot out into space it sped straight
for the approaching fleet without waiting to go into any formation--gray
Roger believed his structures invisible to Triplanetary eyes, thought
that the presence of the fleet was the result of mathematical
calculations, and was convinced that his mighty vessels of the void
would destroy even that vast fleet without themselves becoming known. He
was wrong. The foremost globes were allowed actually to enter the mouth
of that conical trap before an offensive move was made. Then the
vice-admiral in command of the fleet touched a button, and
simultaneously every generator in every Triplanetary vessel burst into
furious activity. Instantly the hollow volume of the immense cone became
a coruscating hell of resistless energy, an inferno which, with the
velocity of light, extended itself into a far-reaching cylinder of
rapacious destruction. Ether-waves they were, it is true, but vibrations
driven with such fierce intensity that the screens of deflection
surrounding the pirate vessels could not handle even a fraction of their
awful power. Invisibility lost, their defensive screens flared briefly;
but even the enormous force backing Roger's inventions, greater far than
that of any single Triplanetary vessel, could not hold off the
incredible violence of the massed attack of the hundreds of mighty
vessels composing the Fleet. Their defensive screens flared briefly,
then went down; their great spherical hulls first glowing red, then
shining white, then in a brief moment exploding into flying masses of
red hot, molten, and gaseous metal.
A full two-thirds of Roger's force was caught in that raging,
incandescent beam; caught and obliterated: but the remainder did not
retreat to the planetoid. Darting out around the edge of the cone at a
stupendous acceleration, they attacked its flanks and the engagement
became general. But now, since enough beams were kept upon each ship of
the enemy so that invisibility could not be restored, each Triplanetary
war vessel could attack with full efficiency. Magnesium flares and
star-shells illuminated space for a thousand miles, and from every unit
of both fleets was being hurled every item of solid, explosive, and
vibratory destruction known to the highly scientific warfare of that
age. Offensive beams, rods and daggers of frightful power struck and
were neutralized by defensive screens equally capable; the long range
and furious dodging made ordinary solid or high-explosive projectiles
useless; and both sides were filling all space with such a volume of
blanketing frequencies that such radio-dirigible torpedoes as were
launched could not be controlled, but darted madly and erratically
hither and thither, finally to be exploded harmlessly in mid-space by
the touch of some fiercely insistent, probing beam of force.
Individually, however, the pirate vessels were far more powerful than
those of the fleet, and that superiority soon began to make itself felt.
The power of the smaller ships began to fail as their accumulators
became discharged under the awful drain of the battle, and vessel after
vessel of the Triplanetary fleet was hurled into nothingness by the
concentrated blasts of the pirates' rays. But the Triplanetary forces
had one great advantage. In furious haste the Secret Service men had
been altering the controls of the radio-dirigible torpedoes, so that
they would respond to ultra-wave control; and, few in number though they
were, each was highly effective.
A hard-eyed observer, face almost against his plate and both hands and
both feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propelling
rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent
rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect
control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne
signals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blast
of its detonation one entire panel of the stricken battleship vanished,
crumpled and broken. It should have been out, cold--but, to the
amazement of the observers, it kept on fighting with scarcely lessened
power! Three more of the frightful space-bombs had to be exploded in
it--it had to be reduced to junk--before its terrible rays went out; Not
a man in that great fleet had even an inkling of the truth; that those
great vessels, those terrible engines of destruction, did not contain a
single living creature: that they were manned and fought by automatons;
robots controlled by keen-eyed, space-hardened veterans inside the
planetoid so distant by means of tight, interference-proof communicator
beams!
But they were to receive an inkling of it. As ship after ship of the
pirate fleet was blown to pieces, Roger realized that his navy was
beaten, and forthwith all his surviving vessels darted toward the apex
of the cone, where the heaviest battleships were stationed. There each
hurled itself upon a Triplanetary warship, crashing to its own
destruction, but in that destruction insuring the loss of one of the
heaviest vessels of the enemy. Thus passed the _Fearless_, and twenty of
the finest space-ships of the fleet as well. But the ranking officer
assumed command, the war-cone was re-formed, and, yawning maw to the
fore, the great formation shot toward the pirate stronghold, now near at
hand. It again launched its stupendous cylinder of annihilation, but
even as the mighty defensive screens of the planetoid flared into
incandescently furious defense, the battle was interrupted and pirates
and Triplanetarians learned alike that they were not alone in the ether.
Space became suffused with a redly impenetrable opacity, and through
that indescribable pall there came reaching huge arms of force
incredible; writhing, coruscating beams of power which glowed a baleful,
although almost imperceptible, red. A vessel of unheard-of armament and
power, hailing from a distant solar system of the Galaxy, had come to
rest in that space. For months her commander had been investigating sun
after sun in quest of one precious substance. Now his detectors had
found it; and, feeling neither fear of Triplanetarian weapons nor
reluctance to sacrifice those thousands of Triplanetarian lives, he was
about to take it!
CHAPTER IV
Within the Red Veil
Nevia, the home planet of the marauding space-ship, would have appeared
peculiar indeed to Terrestrial senses. High in the deep red heavens a
fervent blue sun poured down its flood of brilliant purplish light upon
a world of water. Not a cloud was to be seen in that flaming sky, and
through that dustless atmosphere the eye could see the horizon--a
horizon three times as distant as the one to which we are
accustomed--with a distinctness and clarity impossible in our Terra's
dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky
would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and
steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as
they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and,
through that huge world's wonderfully transparent, gaseous envelope, the
full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we
know it--for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were
many light-years distant from Old Sol and his numerous brood--but a
strange and glorious firmament containing not one constellation familiar
to earthly eyes.
Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void--the vessel
that was shortly to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of
Triplanetary and Roger's planetoid--plunged into the rarefied outer
atmosphere, and crimson beams of force tore shriekingly the thin air as